Osweo
12-10-2010, 10:11 PM
I almost put this in the religious section, as it's of some relevance to that sphere. I wondered how people here would react to the discussion of music in the translation below of part of Rudolf Otto's The Idea Of The Holy - An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational;
There is another kind of experience in which we may find an example of the way in which rational elements in our feeling-consciousness may be thus penetrated by quite nonrational ones, and an example even more proximate to the complex feeling of the holy than that just described - 'erotic'
experience ;- in so far as the non-rational element is, like the numinous feeling but unlike the sexual impulse, at the same time supra-rational. I refer to the state of mind induced in us by a song set to music. The verbal text of the song expresses feelings that are natural , homesickness perhaps,
or confidence in time of danger, hope for a future good, or joy in a present possession all concrete elements in our natural human lot, and capable of being described in conceptual terms. But it is otherwise with the music, purely as music. It releases a blissful rejoicing in us, and we are conscious of a glimmering, billowy agitation occupying our minds, without being able to express or explain in concepts what it really is that moves us so deeply. And to say that the music is mournful or exultant, that it incites or restrains, is merely to use signs by analogy, choosing them for their resemblance to the
matter in hand out of other regions of our mental life ; and at any rate we cannot say what the object or ground of this mourning or exulting may be. Music, in short, arouses in us an experience and vibrations of mood that are quite specific in kind and must simply be called 'musical' ; but the rise and
fall and manifold variations of this experience exhibit - though again only in part - definite, if fugitive, analogies and correspondences with our ordinary non-musical emotional states, and so can call these into consciousness and blend with them. If this happens, the specific 'music-consciousness' is
thereby schematized and rationalized, and the resultant complex mood is, as it were, a fabric, in which the general human feelings and emotional states constitute the warp, and the non-rational music-feelings the woof. The song in its entirety is therefore music 'rationalized' .
Now here is illustrated the contrast between the legitimate and the illegitimate processes of rationalization . For, if the song may be called music 'rationalized' in the legitimate sense, in programme-music we have a musical 'rationalism' in the bad sense. Programme-music, that is to say, misinterprets and perverts the idea of music by its implication that the inner content of music is not - as in fact it is - something unique and mysterious, but just the incidental experiences - joy and grief, expansion and repression - familiar to the human heart. And in its attempt to make of musical tones a language to recount the fortunes of men programme-music abolishes the autonomy of music, and is deceived by a mere resemblance into employing as a means what is an end and substantive content in its own right. It is just the same mistake as when the august aspect of the numinous is allowed to evaporate into the 'morally good' , instead of merely being 'schematized' by it, or as when we let 'the holy' be identified with 'the perfectly good' will. And not only programme-music is at fault here. The 'music-drama' of Wagner, by attempting a thorough going unification of the musical and the dramatic, commits the same offence against both the non-rational spirit of the former and the autonomy of either. We can only succeed in very partial and fragmentary fashion in 'schematizing' the non-rational factor in music by means of the familiar incidents of human experience. And the reason is just this, that the real content of music is not drawn from the ordinary human emotions at all, and that it is in no way merely a second language, alongside the usual one, by which these emotions find expression. Musical feeling is rather (like numinous feeling) something 'wholly other' , which, while it affords analogies and here and there will run parallel to the ordinary emotions of life, cannot be made to coincide with them by a detailed point to point correspondence. It is, of course, from those places where the correspondence holds that the spell of a composed song arises by a blending of verbal and musical expression. But the very fact that we attribute to it a spell, an enchantment, points in itself to that woof in the fabric of music of which we spoke, the woof of the unconceived and nonrational.1
1 This is the point of view from which to estimate both the excellent and the inadequate features of E. Hanslick s book, Vom Musicalisch-Schoenen.
But we must beware of confounding in any way the nonrational of music and the non-rational of the numinous itself, as Schopenhauer, for example, does. Each is something in its own right, independently of the other. We shall discuss later whether, and how far, the former may become a means of
expression for the latter.
Not the easiest text to read, but I think I know what he means about this 'otherly' feeling in music, as though it takes the consciousness to strange expanses and feelings not part of our mundane existance. But I don't see how he can be so confident that there really IS something numinous going on, and that the reaction to music isn't 'just' the result of a development of music as a 'secondary language'.
I feel he's harsh to Wagner here too, for this very same 'supra-rational' feeling is very much brought up in me when listening to that composer's work, regardless of any of the Meister's vaunted 'theories' of music-drama.
In opposition to Otto, we could take the evolutionary approach and look at the appearance of music as an adjunct to ritual (especially dance) whereby courtship and social purposes are served, for instance. That we've taken the simple world of rhythm and melody from the bongos in the jungle to its heights in orchestral counterpoint and even synthesised electronic music could be looked at as a 'simple' result of this primaeval 'adaptation' having been swept along like everything else in human nature by the expansion of our cerebral potential...
Thoughts? :p
There is another kind of experience in which we may find an example of the way in which rational elements in our feeling-consciousness may be thus penetrated by quite nonrational ones, and an example even more proximate to the complex feeling of the holy than that just described - 'erotic'
experience ;- in so far as the non-rational element is, like the numinous feeling but unlike the sexual impulse, at the same time supra-rational. I refer to the state of mind induced in us by a song set to music. The verbal text of the song expresses feelings that are natural , homesickness perhaps,
or confidence in time of danger, hope for a future good, or joy in a present possession all concrete elements in our natural human lot, and capable of being described in conceptual terms. But it is otherwise with the music, purely as music. It releases a blissful rejoicing in us, and we are conscious of a glimmering, billowy agitation occupying our minds, without being able to express or explain in concepts what it really is that moves us so deeply. And to say that the music is mournful or exultant, that it incites or restrains, is merely to use signs by analogy, choosing them for their resemblance to the
matter in hand out of other regions of our mental life ; and at any rate we cannot say what the object or ground of this mourning or exulting may be. Music, in short, arouses in us an experience and vibrations of mood that are quite specific in kind and must simply be called 'musical' ; but the rise and
fall and manifold variations of this experience exhibit - though again only in part - definite, if fugitive, analogies and correspondences with our ordinary non-musical emotional states, and so can call these into consciousness and blend with them. If this happens, the specific 'music-consciousness' is
thereby schematized and rationalized, and the resultant complex mood is, as it were, a fabric, in which the general human feelings and emotional states constitute the warp, and the non-rational music-feelings the woof. The song in its entirety is therefore music 'rationalized' .
Now here is illustrated the contrast between the legitimate and the illegitimate processes of rationalization . For, if the song may be called music 'rationalized' in the legitimate sense, in programme-music we have a musical 'rationalism' in the bad sense. Programme-music, that is to say, misinterprets and perverts the idea of music by its implication that the inner content of music is not - as in fact it is - something unique and mysterious, but just the incidental experiences - joy and grief, expansion and repression - familiar to the human heart. And in its attempt to make of musical tones a language to recount the fortunes of men programme-music abolishes the autonomy of music, and is deceived by a mere resemblance into employing as a means what is an end and substantive content in its own right. It is just the same mistake as when the august aspect of the numinous is allowed to evaporate into the 'morally good' , instead of merely being 'schematized' by it, or as when we let 'the holy' be identified with 'the perfectly good' will. And not only programme-music is at fault here. The 'music-drama' of Wagner, by attempting a thorough going unification of the musical and the dramatic, commits the same offence against both the non-rational spirit of the former and the autonomy of either. We can only succeed in very partial and fragmentary fashion in 'schematizing' the non-rational factor in music by means of the familiar incidents of human experience. And the reason is just this, that the real content of music is not drawn from the ordinary human emotions at all, and that it is in no way merely a second language, alongside the usual one, by which these emotions find expression. Musical feeling is rather (like numinous feeling) something 'wholly other' , which, while it affords analogies and here and there will run parallel to the ordinary emotions of life, cannot be made to coincide with them by a detailed point to point correspondence. It is, of course, from those places where the correspondence holds that the spell of a composed song arises by a blending of verbal and musical expression. But the very fact that we attribute to it a spell, an enchantment, points in itself to that woof in the fabric of music of which we spoke, the woof of the unconceived and nonrational.1
1 This is the point of view from which to estimate both the excellent and the inadequate features of E. Hanslick s book, Vom Musicalisch-Schoenen.
But we must beware of confounding in any way the nonrational of music and the non-rational of the numinous itself, as Schopenhauer, for example, does. Each is something in its own right, independently of the other. We shall discuss later whether, and how far, the former may become a means of
expression for the latter.
Not the easiest text to read, but I think I know what he means about this 'otherly' feeling in music, as though it takes the consciousness to strange expanses and feelings not part of our mundane existance. But I don't see how he can be so confident that there really IS something numinous going on, and that the reaction to music isn't 'just' the result of a development of music as a 'secondary language'.
I feel he's harsh to Wagner here too, for this very same 'supra-rational' feeling is very much brought up in me when listening to that composer's work, regardless of any of the Meister's vaunted 'theories' of music-drama.
In opposition to Otto, we could take the evolutionary approach and look at the appearance of music as an adjunct to ritual (especially dance) whereby courtship and social purposes are served, for instance. That we've taken the simple world of rhythm and melody from the bongos in the jungle to its heights in orchestral counterpoint and even synthesised electronic music could be looked at as a 'simple' result of this primaeval 'adaptation' having been swept along like everything else in human nature by the expansion of our cerebral potential...
Thoughts? :p